VMware vCenter Server is centralized management application and framework that serves as a proxy for managing ESXi hosts an their virtual machines. VMware vCenter Server allows you to centrally manage hosts from either a physical or virtual Windows machine, and enables the use of advanced features such as vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), vSphere High Availability (HA), vSphere vMotion, vSphere Storage vMotion, and vSphere Auto Deploy.

VMware vCenter 5.0 comes in two flavors, one that is an “all-included” virtual appliance, and one that is a regular Windows installation package. Let’s take a look at vCenter installation. If you compare it to the vCenter 4 installation procedure you’ll see that VMware has added quite a few more things that can be installed.

Scalability: The visibility found in vCenter Server is scalable across hundreds of ESX servers and thousands of VMs. Using Linked Mode, you can also manage multiple vCenter servers within the same vSphere client

Visibility: vCenter Server allows you to configure ESX servers and VMs, as well as monitor performance throughout the entire infrastructure, using events and alerts.

You can install vCenter Server in a Microsoft Windows virtual machine that runs on an ESXi host. Deploying the vCenter Server system in the virtual machine has the following advantages:

Provide high availability for the vCenter Server system by using vSphere HA.

Migrate the VM containing vCenter from one host to another.

You can create snapshots of the vCenter Server virtual machine.

Rather than dedicating a separate server to the vCenter Server system, you can place it in a virtual machine running on the same host where your other virtual machines run.